My life is wonderful.

I have immense gratitude for my beautiful family, my incredible friends, my work, and my home – the roof over my head that offers me protection and a place to (simply) be. My life is lived – usually in full view of all those around me. I say usually because sometimes it gets too hard and then I pull away and seek out a space where I can hide erm... withdraw from the world for a while. But from an outsider’s perspective, I have every reason to be happy and at peace…

But life isn’t always what it seems.

We all have a past – nothing overly notorious in my case – but still… a past. Things that most days occupy the deep recesses of my mind and only float to the surface when the pressures of life get a little hard, and seemingly conspire with current challenges to bring about my downfall from time to time.

Here’s the thing… some memories live betwixt and between the neurological synapses of the brain. They lie dormant, awakening when similar connections fire - prompted by current events in our lives. The brain seeks to process, organise, and then store all new information that it receives on a daily basis… and just as we might have in our own lives – it too has a filing system that it uses to file our experiences and bits of information gleaned between sunrise and sunset… and for the sake of efficiency, it tends to file similar information and experiences together which enables the process of human learning and growth.

But it also brings old stored memories to the surface during the process. Everything that we have ever done, or experienced; every moment of our lives is stored permanently in our brain, even if we are seemingly unable to access some of it.

There is also another place where memories are stored.

The heart.

The heart has a memory system all of its own, full of emotional synapses. And the memories and connections formed here lie much closer to the surface than anything else, despite what we may think. They are felt more deeply and evoke a more intense response within us than anything else. But they serve to inform and direct our lives at a level that can make or break us.

In life, it is insufficient merely to have peace of mind. We also have a deep need for peace within our hearts, and unless we deal fully with the hurts of our past… we can never truly experience that overwhelming sense of peace that is available to all of us.

Lately, I have been dealing with a lot of past emotional hurts… and when I say dealing I mean really and truly examining them… bringing the memory of them to the surface, exploring each of them in great detail, and trying to work out how to find closure in my heart on each of them so that I may put all of these shattered peace(s) back together again in some form or shape that is recognisable to me so that I can file them away as resolved matters in an effort to bring me a renewed sense of being.

And this process of introspection has come about because of the Dreemport - Hive Naija #speekpeece challenge.

When it was first announced, I was so excited about it. I thought:

THIS IS GOING TO BE AN ENJOYABLE AND REWARDING EXPERIENCE!

Boy oh boy… was I ever WRONG and RIGHT at the same time!!!

It has not been enjoyable at all. In fact, I usually love Dreemport challenges. I am, after all, a #dreemer for life. But THIS???

This challenge broke me!

BUT…

It has also been an incredibly rewarding experience.

It forced me to take a really good look at my life. The first weekend of #speekpeece I did a deep dive. I spent almost an entire day thinking back, dredging up old memories, and old hurts; reflecting. And you know what I ended up with that first day?

Peace?

Resolution?

NOPE!!! Far from it… I ended up in a world of pain. I cried… and cried… and then… I cried some more. And these were not tears of self-pity. A lot of the time they were deep-rooted sobs of despair, heartache, and regret. But I let it all out.

I submitted a few daily reports for the challenge. I spent some time in the #speekpeece room. I had every intention of writing on Friday… but I couldn’t. In fact, I have written barely anything in the past 2 weeks. It wasn’t that I lacked the time or that I lacked the commitment. I simply… could not. I had so many unanswered questions and my entire being was just too preoccupied with trying to find the answers.

I felt like I had tipped out all the scattered peaces of my heart into a pile and that I needed time to sort through it all and finally to make sense of what I had buried inside of me because I realised that glossing over pain points in my life and simply filing them away in the to do pile… or as it turned out… the never to do pile, was not getting me anywhere fast and was actually holding me back from living a truly fulfilled and peaceful life.

Week 2 of #speekpeece was much of the same. I submitted a couple of reports and then again did not write for the challenge on Friday.

Over the period of this challenge, I spent a lot of time confiding in friends… and family. And a significant amount of time in prayer.

I shared things with my kids… things where I felt that my actions/inactions had perhaps caused them pain in the past – and I apologised. I received only love and warm hugs in return and the response was that they had no memory of what on earth I was talking about… and bar one or two things… they only had good memories. Isn't it crazy how big some things can seem to us...?

I shared experiences from my life, my marriage, and my childhood… with people from my tribe. Time and again I discovered that I was not alone… that there were countless examples of shared experiences, shared heartaches, and unresolved hurts.

It’s true what they say:

A problem shared, is a problem halved.

The #speekpeece challenge may be finishing today, but I am not finished with it. I feel that I have managed to put back together some of the peeces of my heart during these 3 weeks, but I still have some peece to restore.

This weekend marks the start of a new journey for me.

I will live anew.

A fresh start that could not be more perfectly timed. I feel within my heart that it allows me to draw a line in the sand…

... actually…no!

It enables me to carve a line in the bedrock of my life.

It comes on a date of significance, in a location that holds a very special place in my heart, and with people who mean the world to me.

Time is a great healer, and good friends and prayer are the greatest enablers of peace.

And so…in the end… I did write… and I know that for me… the #speekpeece challenge has been life altering… and life-affirming. If you took part, then I hope that in some way, it has been as important to you.

To get to a point where you realise that peace has to start from within… that you cannot look outwards until you have cast your gaze inwards. That you cannot even begin to explore the fragmentation that lies outside of you until you have found all the little shattered *peace(s) within you, and restored them. And all those little pieces... when put back together again… form a beautiful new creation; a mosaic of our life - a beautiful life visibly marked with the lines of experience – both good and bad - experiences that have helped us to learn lessons, overcome challenges, and shaped the human beings that we are today.

This, for me, is what lay at the centre of #speekpeece.

It was my biggest learning curve.

And... it was my take-home point.

Be blessed my friends, be happy…, and may you too find peace.

This may be the end of my post but it is by no means the end of my story… it is simply the beginning…

... a new beginning.